At last, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) landed at the kingpin (and Congress Treasurer) Ahmed Patel’s home in the Sandesara –Sterling Biotech Group-related money laundering scam and more than Rs.6000 crores worth bank cheating case. It took three years for the agencies to reach Ahmed Patel and question him for eight hours. Fugitive Gujarat based Sandesara Group promoters were totally blessed by Ahmed Patel in his heydays. PGurus in September 2017 reported first about Ahmed Patel’s son-in-law Irfan Siddiqui being on the radar of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the ED after the unearthing of Sandesara pay-out Diaries. CBI’s First Information Report (FIR) mentioned how Irfan was involved in dealing with bribe money[1].
The ED also unearthed the role of money transporting and handling by Ahmed Patel’s son Faizal Patel. One hawala operator Johny confessed before the court that he directly handed over money bags to Ahmed Patel many times from fugitive Vadodara-based Sandesara Group promoters. The agencies also fixed Ahmed Patel’s close aide Gagan Dhawan also in handling money from the Sandesara Group, which was engaged in all kinds of imports and exports (a euphemism for smuggling) from across the globe[2].
The Sandesara Group probe has created a huge tussle and a split in the CBI, ED and Income Tax departments for the past three years as many uncouth Gujarat-based officers were trying to sabotage this high profile case.
The probe against Sandesara Group created a huge tussle in the CBI, leading to the exit of its Director Alok Verma, who opposed the continuation of Special Director Rakesh Asthana, whose name figured in the Sandesara payout diaries for accepting Rs.3.8 crores. Many Gujarat-based IAS, IPS and IRS officers were in the payroll of Sandesara Group whose flagship firm is Sterling Biotech. CBI had already registered a case against three Income Tax Commissioners in this regard. One of the Commissioners was accepting money from Ahmed Patel’s son-in-law Irfan Siddiqui, according to CBI FIR[3].
Due to the role of many Gujarat-based officers, the probe against Ahmed Patel in the Sandesara case was getting delayed. Many of these officers were equally close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah as well as Ahmed Patel, who was ruling the roost till May 2014. The Sandesara Group probe has created a huge tussle and a split in the CBI, ED and Income Tax departments for the past three years as many uncouth Gujarat-based officers were trying to sabotage this high profile case. Hope Prime Minister Narendra Modi this time has given strict orders to fix all the uncouth corrupt elements in the bureaucracy. It is obvious that Ahmed Patel will play all dirty tricks against Modi and Shah for letting agencies to enter his home and question him for eight hours. For the past two months, Ahmed Patel was blatantly ignoring the ED summons, citing Covid-19 as a reason to avoid interrogation.
References:
[1] CBI FIR names son-in-law of Ahmed Patel (Irfan) of bribing Income Tax officials – Sep 25, 2017, PGurus.com
[2] Ahmed Patel directly received money from Sterling-Sandesara Group, confesses the accused hawala operator Johny – Aug 5, 2018, PGurus.com
[3] Son of Asthana worked at Sterling Biotech, daughter’s marriage party at Sterling farmhouse, accuses Prashant Bhushan – Nov 22, 2017, PGurus.com
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As always nothing will happen. How can there be a system where some officers can jeopardise cases being investigated by CBI/ed/ income tax. They should be out of the system completely. If they interfere they should be sacked on the spot without any of their perks. Sadly it ain’t going to happen in India.
[…] खबर को अंग्रेजी में यहाँ […]
Sorry to say..how come majority of the big corrupt crooks are from Gujarat State only?
Subject to correction none employed in Defense forces?!!!
PM-Shah are insulting our massive votes given and are just doing drama-baazi to fight corruption cases.
Can both top leaders tell us the status on bring black money from abroad? There is no point in saying they have inherited a rotten system. Experienced persons can solve jatil samayas/rotten systems! PM Modi and his former secretary took “five years to understand Delhi”!! Their respective tweets are proofs!! Do we need such leaders and bureaucrats to rule and ruin us economically and safety wise? This is not happening everything is centralized in PMO when compared with first term of PM Modi!!
On this six plus years of BJP regime now, my very humble opinion is that any person who rose from a poor family let is say a chai wala and got elected as a PM and HM coming from RSS stable with a strong patriotism written on his temple/in the brain irrespective of cast, creed and age would have included in the Cabinet an array of experienced persons in four major ministries (not caste based vote percentage bringing ministry making method!) and three associated ministries to fix rotten issues in Economy first, Commerce, Trade and bringing black money to fight COVID19.
I do not trust PM-Shah anymore.I respect them for their 15 hours a day hard works.
But I always get a feeling these kind of CBI interrogation, raids, chargesheet, trial and then Verdict may not come in our life time unless the evidence is TOO OBVIOUS to everyone. No such evidence is there I feel here. Take the case of National Herald, the case is very clear and all evidences are out in the open and no witness is required as they are document based that too in public domain like RoC (Registrar of Companies), Annual reports (B/s) and also the agreements between Congress and YI and AJL. However the case is dragging on and on… with no end in sight. Though I feel good on hearing such news, I should not be too much delighted to see the end of this soon. This is like another PC case….. case goes on, on, and on.
Better late than never
Good PM acted at last against Ahmed Patel in Sandesara case